Distorted messages

Some of you may remember that after the last lot of auditions I did I was pretty upset that Paul (my friend and rival!) got the part again - but not because I didn't get it, but because the feedback from the person who made the call was 'They wanted a lyric tenor not a character tenor', which given the last two times I'd lost out to Paul it was for character tenor roles.

Well, last night after rehearsal I was having a chat (for which read rollicking old gossip!) with Carol, our chair who also directed, and thus cast, that show. And eventually I plucked up the courage and told her how I felt about what happened.

Now here's the thing:

That wasn't what happened.
It seems that the person who passed on the message (who wasn't on the audition committee, just was the person who made the telephone calls) had actually made that up. She wasn't told that and it was not the reason I didn't get the part. In fact, Carol told me that they were blown away by my audition and discussed it for several hours before being able to come to a decision.

So the facts are that actually I gave a really good audition and was a serious contender for the part. And I've been intermittently brooding about this for probably eight months on the strength of an unconnected person's guess work.

I can't tell you how happy this made me.